


When The Sun Goes Down

by apeirophobia



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula Untold (2014)
Genre: Dark!Vlad, F/M, Gen, HappilyAdopted!Ingeras, M/M, Modern Day, Reincarnation, SingleDad!Mehmed, Specifically in dealing with people he's killed in their past lives, Vlad has Issues, Which is enough people for it to to get awkward at parties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-26 23:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2671100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apeirophobia/pseuds/apeirophobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six centuries of watching the world go by has put a serious dent in Vlad's morals. He is an indulgent god, an apex predator, but there's a sense of tedium and repetition to keeping to the shadows, only coming out to take what he wants. When he meets Harker, a young man who eerily resembles a past lover of Vlad's, his composure and self-control starts to fray as his past and the modern day begin to converge in a manner he never could have predicted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. at the mercy of darker instincts

Vlad first sees him in a bookstore, which is appropriately fitting (an echo of a boy meeting his soon-to-be-closest-friend amid the scrolls of all Thrace), even if at the time he doesn't believe it truly  _is_ him. A likeness maybe, he tells himself, a similarity to another boy with deep brown eyes and slight shoulders. Vlad thinks the young man is perhaps twenty-five, maybe younger? it's hard to tell, everyone in this damn century looks so young to him. He's familiar, but not an exact replica of the man Vlad once trusted above all others (not that that makes Vlad want to put his mouth on him any less), and it stirs something more in him than just the normal urge to consume. A deeper need, a need to _possess_. It's been six hundred years since Vlad tore the Ottoman army apart with his hands and his teeth, ending with Mehmed, and the memory of his former brother-in-arms' final breaths are still clear in his mind. There was a time when the only thing he loved more then Mehmed was the glory of the battlefield. (There was a time when the only thing he loved more than the stench of carnage was Mirena's touch.) Now he has only blood, and the lust of its own kind it brings. No Mehmed. No Mirena. And after fifty-seven years of peace and distraction, no Ingeras.

 

No hope of anything to draw his attention away from the darkness. (And Vlad can feel the rush of blood around him, two stories full of mortals surrounding him, 3,700 square feet of walking temptation, and there's enough here to sate anyone's thirst, even that of an Impaler.) Any heartbeat in the building would suffice but he only wants one pulse beneath his tongue, the young man who stands before him, currently reaching for a book above his head. Vlad steps under the bookcase ladder and when he looks up at his prey he hopes his eyes aren't too black.

 

"Light reading?" Vlad says conversationally, catching the tome when it falls off the shelf. He turns it over in his hands, scanning the title, something heavy and wordy concerning European history. He's surprised he hasn't read it already. And impressed.

 

The boy on the ladder laughs, "Or not so light," he says, taking the substantial book back from Vlad, "Sorry about almost dropping that on you."

 

"Oh it's no problem," Vlad says, charmingly polite, holding out his hand in assistance, like a gentleman. The younger man takes it when he steps down off the ladder and Vlad smiles. He finds it more satisfying sometimes to lure his prey in without an overt use of his vampiric powers. There will be plenty of time for force later.

 

"It's for work," the boy says, gesturing at the war chronicle he's holding, a volume by _Hart_ , and continues, "I'm more of a del Toro fan when left to my own devices,"

 

"Oh, a fan of the supernatural are you?" Vlad says, and tries to not smile too largely at his own joke.

 

The young man fixes upon him a scrutinizing look, one he's seen a million and a half times on Mehmed's face, a flash of cynicism in such a youthful face, and he says, "I like the fantasy, I guess," as if daring Vlad to mock him. "I'm a military strategist, maybe I just need the break from reality sometimes," and, oh, isn't he just full of surprises, Vlad thinks.

 

"A military strategist?" Vlad asks, and thinks _you remind me of someone I once knew_.

 

"Consultant, actually," he says with a shrug, as if that explains everything, and Vlad nods knowingly as if it does. It explains the styled hair and the woolen sweater. It explains the juxtaposition of the hard look in the boy's eyes and the fact that he doesn't look like he's seen a day on the battlefield. Vlad wonders what Mehmed's torso would look like without the litany of scars his childhood had imposed on him. He would definitely like to find out. Maybe he can draw this out, maybe find out what anguished and intimate sounds the strategist can make before Vlad sucks him dry. Find out if they sound the same.

 

"The military strategist wouldn't happen to have a name, would he?" Vlad asks, shaking himself from thoughts of the past. No matter how good a memory, or how strong a love, it all turns to hunger in the end. 

 

"Harker, Consultant Harker, at your service," Harker introduces himself, shifting his stack of books to one arm and extending his hand for Vlad to shake.

 

"Vlad Lesti," Vlad says, and when their hands touch Vlad can feel Harker's pulse, strong and steady, as it snakes up the veins of his arm to his heart.

 

"It was nice to meet you Vlad," Harker says, and then he's gone, like a clang of silver and a flash of gold.

 

Vlad watches him go and wonders if the boy has ever been more wrong in his short life.

 


	2. under the influence of memory

Vlad follows him home.

 

He leans against a lamppost across the city street and memorizes the numbers Harker presses into the home security system pad in his foyer (he has two, no doubt a by-product of working with the military) while looking over the consultant's abode. It's a downtown Georgian townhouse, picturesque, with a half-frozen jack-o-lantern on the front stoop and Roman drapes in the windows. He stands, unmoving, for the better part of an hour as heat emanates from the brick and two individuals with heartbeats move around inside. The familiar one is Harker's, the other is just as strong but twice as fast. Harker has a child, a little thing with blond curls and a high voice that Vlad's extremely sensitive ears can pick up easily from more then forty yards away. Vlad saw the child, briefly, earlier when Harker carried the toddler into the house, but between the high-turned collar and the low-pulled hat he couldn't make out whether it was a boy or a girl. It shouldn't (it _doesn't_ ) make a difference to him either way, Harker is the one he is after, he doesn't concern himself with children.

 

He's supposed to be better than this, less affected. It's not as if he really believes that Harker  _is_ Mehmed, but at the same time he does. Harker is different, gentler in a way that Mehmed might have been if he wasn't born into war and raised in fire, but he feels like he belongs to Vlad, in a way, and that is very Mehmed. As a vampire, as a soul damned to walk the earth with no hope of the cycle of existence ever being broken, it is not unusual to get anything that one desires, but it is incredibly rare to keep it. Vlad doesn't know if he wants to destroy Harker or...

 

A very long time ago Vlad risked everything, his very _soul_ , to keep what he couldn't bare to lose, and ended up losing everything that made him the man he once was. Vlad exhales, and is reminded once more of his absolute physical inhumanity when his breath produces no steam in the chilled November air. He doesn't remember what it feels like to be cold, but he doesn't remember what it feels like to be warm either. Self-control seems a foreign concept to him, he who has strength with impunity and forever to forgive himself his transgressions, but then what is he doing? Watching across the street as what should be an easy source of satisfaction continues to draw breath, reconsidering his own motives? Is he exerting self-control, or merely savoring the kill? He thinks of Mirena, of how her kind heart and her fierce determination damned him so easily, because he could never say no to her, even when she asked him to knock on hell's door. He thinks of how he turned out to be every bit the monster the Sultan always boasted him to be, and how good it felt to sink his teeth into the Sultan's son and _take_. He loved Mirena, and he loved Mehmed, and yet when their blood ran hot under his tongue nothing tasted sweeter. He indulges in the echo of Harker's pulse, imagines the rush of tempting blood under his skin and thinks _i_ _t's best to not try to have anything at all_.

 

Later, he watches through the kitchen side window as Harker makes dinner. His eyesight isn't the best in his bat-form but his hearing is phenomenal. He can hear Harker riffling through the pages of one of his new books as he loads the dishwasher, can hear the light padding of bare feet on hardwood floors as the child tries to share toys with the household cat, he can hear a bath running upstairs, can hear Harker and the little one slowly take the stairs, the toddler stumbling and giggling every other step.

 

Vlad reforms when all the lights, save for a pilot in the kitchen and nightlight in the upstairs hall, are turned out and both inhabitants asleep. He lets himself in through the mudroom door at the back of the house, closing the door gently behind him and turning off the set alarm like he saw Harker do earlier.

 

He doesn't have a concise plan, just a need. A need to quiet the want in his mind and the question in his soul.

 


	3. treading the line

 

Vlad trails his fingers over granite countertops as he passes through the kitchen and listens to the calming quiet of the sleeping house, the only noise a soothing hum of heartbeats coming from upstairs. He shoos the cat when he tries to rub up against his black pants and makes his way towards the stairs, avoiding an heirloom chest that reeks of silver. The whole house has a sense of familiarity to it and that's not right. He's never been here before. He's been in this city, years before Harker would have been born, but this street holds no memories for him. Why then, the closer to his target he gets, do distant memories,  _human_  memories, come rushing back?

  

* * *

 

Vlad is sixteen and drunk on the heat of battle when he pushes his best friend up against the barrack wall and makes his intentions clear. He's sixteen and doesn't care if the Sultan has his head because he's killed more enemies for the empire than any other soldier and if that doesn't grant him the right to fuck the Sultan's son before the bodies on the battlefield have cooled than what's the point? What's the point of glory and blood, of being broken and remade in another kingdom's image if there isn't some reward to be reaped from it, if there isn't some pleasure to be had? Vlad is sixteen and he knows the sting of the whip and the taste of iron and the heady rush of victory but he wants _more_ (Mehmed is fifteen and he knows nothing but battle and expectation and _Vlad_ ). They reflect each other in equal measure, like the groves the hilt of a sword leaves in the palm of your hand, inflicted impressions of perfection. Vlad is innocence lost, a child stolen from a family destroyed, and Mehmed is innocence never had, a child created to rule, born into war, and the difference is subtle, but it's there.

 

To Mehmed Vlad is something good, possibly the only good thing in his life, an area of interest that exists outside his father's critique. He knows that in his father's eyes he will never measure up to Vlad, but with Vlad there is no competition because they compliment each other, they play to each other's strengths. He knows Vlad is dangerous, but only in a distant way that doesn't truly affect him. The eye of the storm is where the wind is the calmest, and Mehmed is close enough to Vlad to be the only one safe from his ire. It's not a strategy, though strategy is his strongest suit, just a natural procession, possibly a masochistic one, to align himself with the only person in the empire his father loves more than himself. To Vlad Mehmed is an epitome of everything he should hate but instead finds himself coveting. Mehmed has cunning and poise, with a seeming lack of cruelty, and that keeps Vlad on his toes. Mehmed is a constant challenge to his wit, the only person who can match him blow-for-blow in a sword-fight and, perhaps best of all, a guaranteed loyalty above the Sultan. Vlad, in his darkest thoughts, sees Mehmed as a means to an end, a means of conquering that goes beyond the battlefield, but mostly they just see each other as their closest friend.

 

"Sorry," Vlad says, after, when he comes back to himself and realizes he's rushed too far, too fast. Mehmed, who's lying on the floor beside him, still in his wrist-guards and half of his maille, raises an eyebrow questioningly at him before resting his head on Vlad's chest.

 

"I didn't ask," Vlad says, but even as he speaks he belies his concerns by raking his fingernails down Mehmed's side, and even without the claws he will possess half a millennia later he still leaves welts in their wake.

 

"I didn't say no," Mehmed says with a shrug, and he is breathless but acquiescent, like he saw this coming a mile away. And maybe he did. A particular talent of Mehmed's has always been seeming nonplused in the face of Vlad's impulsiveness. Vlad has no point of relativity, and even less room to judge, but Mehmed strikes him as a bit jaded for almost fifteen.

 

He doesn't kiss him, instead he trails his teeth along the lines of Mehmed's left cephalic vein to where it meets his wrist and bites, hard enough to leave a mark but not hard enough to break the skin, as if to say " _mine_ ", and Mehmed laughs.

 

"You think because you claimed a couple of villages you can claim me?"

 

"I did claim you," Vlad says, and he's not just talking about sex. It's been a thorough acquisition, more than eight years in the making, from the time he laid eyes on Mehmed as a small child to this moment. Mehmed may be the strategist, but Vlad shouldn't be counted out entirely.

 

"Vlad the Impaler, a bit on the nose, no?" Mehmed says, because he is immature and endlessly amused by the moniker Vlad seems to have acquire in his father's latest campaign.

 

"Shut up," Vlad says, and when he laughs all the aches from the battle earlier make themselves known.

 

Mehmed makes an empathetic noise and pushes Vlad's arms above his head. He digs his fingers into Vlad's flank, right where his muscles were starting to stiffen and twist, and Vlad's eyes threaten to close in pleasure.

 

"I don't mind," Mehmed says, and Vlad can't tell if he means he doesn't mind ridding Vlad's muscles of knots, or doesn't mind the sex, or doesn't mind that his best friend, his brother-in-arms, has attained such a vivid appellation for his brutal acts on the battlefield. Or that he doesn't mind that said brother  _commits_ such brutal acts in the first place.

 

"One day I'm going to be the Sultan," Mehmed says with absolute certainty in his voice, "and all those who oppose me will have to answer to you."

 

Mehmed is the fourteen-year-old Prince of a constantly expanding empire with an extremely contentious father, there are so few things he lets himself be certain about.

 

"I look forward to it," Vlad says, and he grins like a knife. Like a promise.

 

* * *

 

But that isn't how it happens. Duty, and betrayal, and heartbreak and growing up happen instead and by the time Mehmed kneels for his coronation Vlad has already put a ring on Mirena's finger, and a child inside her.

 

Standing outside of Harker's bedroom Vlad tells himself it doesn't matter, (tells himself that so little matters now, so much time has passed) but that's a lie. It's been nearly six hundred years and Vlad's broken promise still grates at him. He thinks of Mehmed's face, thinks of Harker's face, and wonders what second chances are _really_ for. He pushes open Harker's bedroom door.

 

It's been nearly six hundred years and Vlad still hasn't outgrown his impulsiveness. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love! Hope you enjoy <3


End file.
